HR would have been the last function in any organization where one would have expected for geeky buzzwords to appear. That changed as technological advancements hit the customer-facing applications and CRM closely followed by business operations. Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, and Robotics made deep impacts in these functions, changing the language and landscape from what we knew less than a decade ago.
If you do a quick Google search you will find scores of vendors offering people solutions driven by AI, Robotics Process Automation, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning and now Conversational HR. The ability to offer such solutions through cloud has increased their accessibility exceedingly.
Another trend that captures our attention is that 90% innovations in HR tend to be in the Hiring domain or more popularly known as Talent Acquisition. You may think it is not surprising due to a number of reasons, the top one being Talent Acquisition is one of the key strategic function for any organization. Unless the right people are on the team, an organization will not be able to achieve its goals. Hence, the HR industry is always looking for better solutions to acquire the best talent, as this is not only a strategic function but also a competitive advantage for an organization.
The lesser prominent reasons for this trend also indirectly point to the gaps and issues within this function.
Hiring is a function where a high number of third-party stakeholders and non-employees are involved. Most enterprise technologies are limited by access only to an organization’s employees. Hence recruitment teams end up using point solutions that cater to these users who are outside the definition of ‘employees’. Such users include candidates, recruitment agencies, background verification agencies etc.
Secondly, while from a macro perspective Hiring begins with sourcing the candidates and goes all the way to inducting and integrating the hired candidate into the workforce, the function is handled by multiple departments internally. Most products serving this space are limited by the departmental divide within the company and do not support an end to end view or operations.
The above trends lead to frustration and inefficiency in the Talent Acquisition space due to the following reasons:
Lack of end to end visibility – When there is are multitude of point solutions with users siloed across different departments, businesses lacks a clear visibility on the status of a particular resource requirement or the quality.
Less than efficient Candidate Engagement – Candidate Engagement happens via emails and phone calls or an isolated portal which can lead to missed communication and lack of an integrated experience.
Incomplete metrics – Hiring starts from Sourcing and ends with the integration of the hired candidate. There are multiple factors that go into Hiring the right person into the organization from sourcing channels such as the interview process, quality of the interview panel, induction process and training. Without a view of how these interconnected processes interact with each other and perform, organizations will miss out on key metrics to learn and improve their processes.
Lack of transparency – Transparency is critical when there are multiple stakeholders involved, both from status tracking and communication perspectives. The goal of a hire, intended process, metrics designed at every stage etc. needs to be transparent, communicated and feedback collected and shared at every stage for the Hiring process for a smooth function. This is currently one of the biggest gaps across organizations.
Missed communication – Last but not the least, communication that happens between different stakeholders across different mediums and technology platforms, when not integrated can lead to misses. For example: A recruiter promises a bonus to a candidate and the business is not aware of it, this can lead to frustration and failure for both the candidate and the business.
Can AI, Robotics, and Machine Learning really solve the above issues or is there something more basic and deeper that needs to be addressed? We will look into that question in our next blog. In the meantime, we would like to hear your thoughts and invite you to share the gaps and issues you see in your Recruitment process that will help us have a more meaningful conversation around our next blog.
Comments